Another Firecrest

Well, the same Firecrest, or one of the same ones anyway. I couldn't resist going back for another look at the weekend. Well, actually, apart from today, I think I've been to see them every day since whatever day it was I first saw them. They're that good. I saw three again on Sunday; what's better then three Firecrests eh? How about four Firecrests? Yup, there could be four according to a report from another of the local birders. Hopefully they will stay all winter - likely - and I'll get to see even more of them. Snow rarely penetrates into the lower story of Bush Wood, but it's a photo I find myself dreaming of from time to time.

Photographing them is rather challenging. Slow and predictable they are not, and the Holly plays havoc with the autofocus system. You can forget about a tripod, no way is that quick enough, you have to hand hold. It's pretty dark in there, so that nice high shutter speed you wanted isn't going to happen. Nonetheless, modern technology is there to offer a helping hand. Hello image stabilisation, and hello high ISO. I took this next photo at 1/320s at ISO 1250. The focal length is 650mm equivalent, so you can see IS in operation here - I've managed a sharp shot (Picasa, my host, tends to muller my photos, the one on my screen is a lot nicer) with an extremely heavy lens which I would expect to wobble like a good'un. And the only reason I even scraped 1/320s is because I had 1250 available and knew it would be OK - you can see some grain but isn't troublesome. You won't be able to tell from the photo, but I also underexposed it by 2/3rds of a stop, the metered exposure was only 1/200s. The overall scene tended to dark, thus likely fooling the camera's metering, which is exposing for mid-tones. I felt that -2/3rds was a more accurate reflection of what I was seeing, and it also gave me that extra bit of speed. I probably could have taken it down even more and brought it back up in post-processing, a useful trick if you're really struggling with available light.

Essex Birds

Wanstead is in Essex, and that's where I started today. Nick and I were nice and early on the patch, but no goodies were produced. I had palpitations early on when I saw two distant flying waterfowl and immediately issued the joyful shout of "Brent Geese!", a long-awaited patch tick. My initial joy turned to consternation though, when after some proper squinting I felt that the rear-most bird was definitely lighter in tone that the lead bird. Although I'd been certain that the first bird was a Brent, the apparent difference between the two raised all sorts of questions, and very sadly I've binned them. Although generally very low, I do have some standards.

Thinking about it, Brent Goose is a good candidate for my most-wanted bird for the patch. It's entirely possible, is big and easy to spot, which is always a plus, and now is the right time of year. That said, there are many others. Marsh Harrier and Short-eared Owl both rank highly, as do Smew and Bewick's Swan. I've decided on my most-wanted for the garden. That's going to be Little Egret from now until I get one. It's still a hard bird away from the Roding, but I'm close enough to the Walthamstow-Thames flight path to be in with a chance. Other possibilities for the garden are Firecrests on an away day, and perhaps also one of the seven Egyptian Geese which seem to have taken up residence on the Basin, just a short flight away.

Why is Alexandra Lake filled with algal blooms and infested with rats? No idea.

Wanstead held little else, six Teal on Alex probably the highlight. A quick grill of the gulls produced nothing remarkable, though I still think that with the number of Common Gulls we get, Ring-billed has to be a serious possibility. I suppose that could be the new most-wanted... A group of Long-tailed Tits did not want their photograph taken, and an out-of-control dog jumped all over me. The second time it jumped all over me, I nudged it away with my leg. Oh dear, in the eyes of the owner that counted as kicking the dog, and that was well out of order. It's great isn't it? A dog jumps all over me and all of a sudden it's my problem. Yes, that sounds fair to me. Here's an alternative suggestion though, dog-owner. Keep your stupid f***ing dog under control or on a f***ing lead, or don't f***ing bring it to Wanstead f***ing Flats. Or am I out of order again? I tell you, the day I get a sincere apology from a dog-owner, or even just an apology, will be the day I..., the day I..., well I just don't know. It's so massively unlikely it will never ever happen.

Moving on, we moved on. To real Essex, with additional passengers in the shape of Paul W and Muffin. Fingringhoe to be precise, where we spent an hour not seeing a Glossy Ibis for Paul's Essex list that he does now keep (it would be a great deal quicker to list the counties for which Paul does not keep a list. Herefordshire I think.), which was in fact there all along. The next stop was Mersea, where I quickly added a perfectly genuine and acceptable Red-breasted Goose to the Essex List I definitely don't keep, and added Black Brant for the day when that becomes tickable.This was a life tick for Muffin, and he was so delighted that he made some patterns in the mud with his trainers. A Wigeon we had been watching and thinking was a little odd then died in front of us, a nice lesson in the natural way of things for junior. This air of finality caused us to surmise that the day was basically over, so we went home.



What do you mean you can't see it?



Weekend

Another five days of toil, another five days of columns and rows. To celebrate the impending two days of relative freedom, I made myself a cheeky Mojito whilst preparing yet another family meal. Where is that fairy when you need her? I didn't take an awful lot of care, I measured nothing. In fact I didn't even crush the ice, but the result was mind-blowingly stupendous. So stupendous that before I even allowed myself a sip I just had to take a photograph of it. Just so we're all clear, it tasted even better than it looks. Wow. Forget Wanstead, Havana here I come.

Just look at it! Just the photo is making me feel thirsty!. I'm seriously considering another, although I'd have to make two as Mrs L is now home. It all bodes well for the weekend, and I have no plans whatsoever. This is how I like weekends to be. No stressing about rare Sandpipers in Somerset, no stressing about funny Greenshanks in Northumberland. I am going to take it easy. I am harbouring vague thoughts about a Red-breasted Goose in Essex, but that's as far as it goes. Whatever you end up doing, have a good one.

Racking them up

Last year I got to the then incredible total of 108 species on the patch. Untouchable, I thought, if I make a hundred I'll be lucky. I know I mentioned this only a couple of days ago but I've gone and added another one!

Firecrest in Bush Wood. The tick actually happened yesterday, but I was busy. I nipped into Bush Wood following a tip-off, not really expecting to find anything, it being a big wood and they being small birds, but it look less than two minutes. Did I have a camera with me? Ah. So today, in need of some air after wrestling with a recalcitrant regulatory capital system, I set off, armed, to Bush Wood. With some trepidation of course, it being the site of previous maltreatment, but it was a nice sunny day, and I felt pretty safe.

As before, I located the birds within five minutes, given away almost immediately by a host of squeaky dog-toy calls. Soon I had three birds flitting around my head between two large holly bushes. Bush Wood is mostly large holly bushes, so I'm not giving away much. Snappity snappity snap. It's relatively dark, and the birds are extremely active, so a high ISO was needed, in this case 1250. Can you tell, because I certainly couldn't? I reckon it's as good as ISO 400 on my last camera, which for most of you is an utterly meaningless comparison. Suffice to say it is amazing. Two years hence and I'll be moaning how awful the dark days of 2011 were, but for now, it's affording me opportunities that didn't exist even two years ago. Loving it. This is what coffee breaks are made for, though I think I actually ascribed it as a late lunch, which I ended up sacrificing in favour of these little beauties. Glad I did, as is my less-than-washboard-like tummy.

Commuting

Once I get to work, I'm generally fine. I act totally professionally, and get on with the job in hand. I do not complain or whimper (whilst there), I suck it up. Getting there is another matter entirely. I LOATHE it. Hate it. Detest it. At the moment I am largely working from home. The commute from bed to study takes approximately ten seconds, involves very little angst, and costs nothing. Some days, however, I go into the office, which is at Canary Wharf. Today was one of those days. Let me describe it for you.

The first half hour was extremely pleasant. Then I finished birding my way across the Flats and, as acid grassland turned to concrete, I found myself in the wilderness of Forest Gate. Descending the stairs at the train station, I waited with about two-hundred other merry commuters. Standing on the platform, watching depressed-looking travellers rattling into Liverpool Street, I casually wondered how many of them were happy. My conclusion, few. Finally a stopping-train came in. It was reasonably full, but plenty of space inside the carriage if people moved down and away from the doors. The doors opened. People, including me, stood on the platform waiting to get on. However people inside the train didn’t move. They kept reading their papers, tapping their smart phones, avoiding eye-contact. The doors closed without a single person where I was stood getting on, and the train moved off. As it did so I could see a man leisurely stretching his legs inside the far end of the carriage. Well thanks very much Essex commuters, you selfish so-and-sos. Perhaps it is merely a mechanism for survival? Don’t speak, don’t give an inch. These are presumably sociable people with families, who enjoy an evening down the pub, who communicate with colleagues now and again. Yet on a train they are silent automatons. This is what I hate about London and about commuting. Part of it is physical, being crammed into small spaces and being uncomfortably close to the smelly parts of other human beings. But part of it is the sheer unfriendliness of it all. You’re all in it together, all hating every minute of it, but yet there is a massive lack of empathy which you would expect to be present in spades in such a horrible environment. Instead it is cold, silent, and forboding. I managed to get onto the second train, where a number of people mistook me for a large sack of potatoes. It did nothing to improve my mood.

Grassy intermission. This is on the Flats, and I have no idea why.

At Stratford station I was ejected, almost literally, onto another heaving platform, and traipsed over to the Docklands Light Railway. Again I found myself sharing other peoples' personal space a little too cozily, but there is nothing you can do. It's have an enforced cuddle with four or five strangers, one of whom will be really scummy, or walk to work. At Canary Wharf, you have to move swiftly. If you don't fall into line and elegantly synchronise your movements with a thousand other people, you are liable to be trampled to death. People at Canary Wharf do not stop, everything is fluid. If you're not moving, you don't exist. There are no barriers, so sometimes I forget to bleep out at the Oystercard reader. Turning back, against the flow, can be suicidal, which brings me neatly to the other thing I hate about commuting in London.

I have a very keen sense of self-preservation. I am not the kind of person who needs regular adrenalin rushes. I have never harboured any desire to go bungy-jumping, sky-diving, or swimming with Great White Sharks, I very much prefer tamer activities. Like sitting down on sofas. I was on the tube on 7th July 2005. Luckily, working in a bank that believed in taking its pound of flesh, I was at my desk well before four crazies from Leeds blew themselves and fifty-two other people up. I am sure I speak for many when I say that travelling by tube has never really been the same since. I remember walking home that day, and the following day I actually got off a train because a man with a bag and a beard got on. Pathetic and predjudiced perhaps, but perfectly understandable. As time passes, the memory fades, but never completely, and always at the back of mind is the thought that some brain-washed freako may jump up and shout "Allahu Akbar!" or some such and then attempt to kill as many people as possible in the hope of being granted 72 Siberian Rubythroats and a Wallcreeper in paradise. Now before anyone passes a fatwah on me, I mention this not as an attack on Islam, which I know nothing about (it might be Siberian Blue Robins, not Rubythroats, I have not really researched it), but because in this day and age lunatics of all creed and race are something you have to be genuinely concerned about. Look at that bloke in Norway, an extreme example perhaps, but there are plenty of other less sensational attacks we all forget about. Just last month in Bexleyheath of all places a woman ran amok with a carving knife and killed a lady on her way to work. An innocent commuter, just like me.

And then of course, assuming I survive all that twice, there and back, I have to run the gauntlet of Bush Wood, over whose 100m distance I now look behind me about forty times. It's easily dark by the time I come through. To say I am paranoid is the understatement of the century, but if you had been pinned to the ground by four blokes, punched in the face ten times entirely unnecessarily and had your Leicas stolen I reckon you'd be pretty paranoid as well. Yeah, I reckon commuting is vastly overrated.

Listing Angst

Mrs L was doing the school run this morning, so I snuck out on the patch before work. Or rather, she kicked me out onto the patch - it is quite possible I would have just lazed around in bed. I am very glad that she did, or at least I think I am. It was extremely misty on the Flats, not the low mist that hangs between three and six feet in the air, but a consistent bank of mist that restricted any kind of view of the sky. Perhaps best to call it extremely low cloud, as horizontal visibility was fine. I had stopped to photograph a large mushroom when an Oystercatcher called. Wah!! Then it called again, a whole series of "kleeps". I strained to see it, I wanted a glimpse, fleeting would have been sufficient. It seemed to have come from south of my position in the Broom Fields, but try as I might one final, faint kleep and that was it. Dagnabit!

I was immediately overcome with self-doubt and introspective cynicism. When I had heard the call, I had immediately and automatically gone "Oystercatcher!" to myself. It is a highly distinctive call. I had looked up expecting to see an Oystercatcher, but the fog had prevented me seeing it. Ten seconds later and I was trying to talk myself out of it. Why? I should have been doing cartwheels, for Oystercatcher was my number one most-wanted patch tick. And this is the problem. It is too convenient. What is my most-wanted patch tick? An Oystercatcher? Right, that's what I'll go out and hear then. SImple. It's another version of seeing what you expect to see, the little cynical voice inside me said. I hung around for a while, listening out for a particularly talented Starling. I strained to turn Ring-neked Parakeets into distant Oystercatchers but could not. I could only conclude that I had been correct. I didn't really need any more convincing, but I was still plagued with small amounts of self-doubt, and so played it on my phone. Yup, Oystercatcher. My suspicion is that it had been feeding on the playing fields south of South Copse, and had been disturbed and taken flight eastwards, as I had heard nothing from the west. Shame then that I had stopped to photograph a mushroom.

For many years, Osprey was my number one target bird. I dispensed with that this September, when I was lucky enough to coincide with one flying lazily south over Alexandra Lake early in the morning. That out of the way, I needed a new target bird. I ended up choosing Oystercatcher, and, after this morning the reason why seems pretty clear. At the time I hadn't given it much thought, but now that I am bashing out the minutae, it's because it was easy with high probability of success. A common bird on the Thames estuary, large, generally not elusive, with a call that even I can recognise, with the added bonus that I could find no historical records. Brilliant, an ideal choice for a top target. I was kidding no-one but myself.

So, I need a new one, but clearly something a bit more challenging, but at the same time, it has to be at least a possibility. I might start a poll thing, it has been a while. Alternatively, please suggest something juicy in the comments box. You can see my Wanstead list here, and the Wanstead historical sitelist here.

Lonely Husband

Mrs L went out today. To do music. This is her hobby, we must not begrudge it. I have, afterall, been known to go out birding from time to time. Not often, but nonetheless those few days of absenteeism are felt. And noted. So today it was her turn. She would only be gone for a few hours, she said. Back mid-afternoon, she said. Mrs L's mid-afternoon is 5:30pm. My mid-afternoon is about 1pm, perhaps 1:30. I pined.

So, no birding today. Well, I could have gone out on the patch this morning, I had a very slim window of opportunity, but I elected to stay in my nice warm bed and make soft snoring noises. This is another rare event, and as the days grow shorter and the nights colder, one I am hopeful of repeating. It has been a very pleasant weekend of low achievement. Precisely, had we had need of a doctor, what he would have ordered. My birding has been restricted to a very brief foray yesterday before lunch. This was enough to relocate the long-staying female Wigeon on Alexandra Lake, and not relocate the six Teal that have been hanging around. In fact the whole sortie could easily have been in vain had a Woodcock not flown past me whilst I was in the Broom Fields on the way back. Naturally there is no photo. I merely looked blankly at it as it flew past, and as it inclined it's head fractionally in my direction, I recalled the camera hanging off my shoulder, but of course it was too late. It nipped over the trees of Long Wood, and appeared to drop in. Even though it is November now, I decided not to go and look for it. The statistician I employ to count birds for me notes that this is only the second ever Woodcock that I have seen in Wanstead, and its sighting exactly mirrors the first, which also flew past my very surprised head in the Broom Fields and plopped into Long Wood. He also mentioned that this is patch year-tick 111, the dreaded Nelson, and that I had to hop home. This I dutifully did, and when I eventually arrived at Chateau L, further good news awaited me - the Woodcock was in fact an actual year tick, new for 2011 anywhere. I shan't tell you the number, it would be embarrassing.

The rest of the weekend has, as I mentioned, been binocular-free. A Greater Yellowlegs annoyed me briefy by being in Northumberland for the entire weekend, but once I realised that even contemplating twitching such a distance was utter madness, it ceased to rankle, and I busied myself doing nothing. Doing nothing, as any good interviewer will tell you, involves playing with children, stopping them fighting, cooking them food, and cleaning up after them. I did a great deal of nothing today, and am rather tired. And when, finally, Mrs L arrived back home, I flopped gratefully into an armchair with a vodka tonic enhanced by passion-fruit syrup, the handover complete. A little later on, I noticed she had left her laptop unguarded on the kitchen worktop. I snuck up to it, got up Google, and searched for "lovely husband", aiming to leave it on that page, just so she knew. Google is a marvellous thing sometimes. Do you know what it said? Try it at home and see if it works for you of if it's a phenomenon unique to Chateau L. Here, at any rate, a search for "lovely husband" brings up "did you mean to search for lonely husband?" Quite.